J'ai commencé à lire Les Champs de la Lune de Catherine Dufour. L'histoire est à la fois simple et exceptionnelle. J'aime beaucoup !

#WordWeavers 2025.05.08 — Would your MC agree with the SC’s (May 7th) description of them?

For review: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114473765155346073

May Ri would scoff. People keep mischaracterizing her, even her daughters.

She knows that she's selfish and arrogant, prone to acting out of temper. She sees herself as self-centered, and has made all sort of bad decisions that frankly, she doesn't understand how she survived. She does love her daughters, but Mars with the crèche system has meant she didn't always have to be raising them, not at all like motherhood on Earth where women do it alone without any schooling. She's surprised and somewhat guilty the five turned out so well, but then they are nisei, the first generation born on Mars, with their own developing communal society—and very alien in that; she tries not to worry about the ramifications because they're always happy. She loves all five of them intensely.

She'll accept that she's a good engineering designer, but it's her teams and her self-centered love of taking things apart and putting them back together in working order that has gotten her to where she's at.

That "Princess of Mars," thing. Ugh. She earned that one because her husband and her first lover didn't realize they were talking about her on an open line on deep space network across the solar system when they discussed her being an animal in bed. Soooo embarrassing!

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.07 — Let your SC describe your MC.

My mother is like a beaten down alpha wolf. Each battle lost only makes her stronger for the next. When the religious men talk about Job in idealistic terms, they do not mean to describe her. Her life? Bad things, over and over, until she shows her outrage at the unfairness of having been born on Earth—a man's world shaped by men, controlled by men, power jealously guarded by men—and demonstrates her temper, making snap decisions often for the benefit of others, for the benefit of Mars. She forgets at times she's on Mars, that her generation's children offer a way out, thanks to her work, her engineering brilliance, and the fights she's picked. When they call her the princess of Mars and she gets all It's really just a joke gone wrong, not a title! she misses the whole point. People look up to her. She'd rather be working on her projects. I get that. She hums when she works, happy. Her happy is best. Though she can fight well, so she can hum all the time she needs protecting. My four sisters and I all agree on this, which is why we all watch out for her in our own way.

—Marisela about May Ri

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STATION ELEVEN. Emily St. john Mandel. 2013.
Dans un monde où la civilisation s'est effondrée, une troupe d'acteurs et de musiciens parcourt la région du lac Michigan...
Ceux qui ont connu l'ancien monde l'évoquent avec nostalgie, alors que la nouvelle génération peine à se le représenter. De l'humanité ne subsistent plus que l'art et le souvenir...
Mon cerveau a placé ce roman dans les décors et paysages de Walking Dead sans zombie.
#labibliothequecanon
#lecture
#sf #livres #mastolivre

#PennedPossibilities 665 — Tell us what smells remind your MC of their childhood. CW: Might be considered too intimate.

I hope this doesn't come off as squick. From our point of view, these people are living in a climate disaster, but it's normal to them. Sweat is a fact of life. People stink. For her ethnicity (read Jewish) and for her race (read white girl) and for living in the wrong neighborhood (guess), Thorn Rose has always been picked on. When she was ten, she got bullied and beat on by a group of boys. Streak, also from that neighborhood where Thorn didn't belong found empathy moments before he too was going to join in. He frightened the others off, he rescued her. Amongst the many features of the boy that imprinted in that moment, it's the smell of his sweat that reminds her even as an adult that only one man ever saved her. She hasn't told him this, of course, but it's the reason she sometimes nuzzles his chest.

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CW: Human rights violations, immigration terror, SFPol

#SF folks, please contact your Supervisor. Did you already think Brooke Jenkins was the worst? Well, you're right.

Here's Indivisible's report about her doing an end run around our sanctuary status to turn people over to ICE:

https://indivisiblesf.org/blog/stop-da-from-cooperating-with-ice?mc_cid=8ca30818e2&mc_eid=639c12797c

Et si les fleurs chantaient ? Un conte #SF pour enfant / What if flowers sang? A #science-fiction tale for children / #photography #TeamPixel #GooglePixel #FungiFriends #Google #Pixel #naturephotography #fleurs #flowers https://www.laurentvoyage.com/?La-melodie-lumineuse-de-Floralia

#PennedPossibilities 663 — How do your characters strive to progress, thrive, and better themselves in a positive way?

At the current point in the story, Thorn Rose and Streak are still teens growing into becoming adults. Schooling is the most obvious way they better themselves. Taking care of one another, fighting the various prejudices they face due to gender, "race," and ethnicity is how they manage to thrive, together.

Rainy Days (the antagonist), however, almost always thrives (except the few times she was almost killed). Experience helps. A lot, and she remembers every centimeter of progress she makes. She teaches people what she's learned, and trains them to help her save their world; she recognizes, finally, that she can't do it alone. Thorn Rose and Streak are a pair of her current victims students. She strives always to better herself to prevent the catastrophic mistakes she made in the past. Whilst she isn't responsible for all the problems facing the Earth, she is responsible for the current egregious climate disaster. She'll do anything to prevent disasters of that level, including changing and humbling herself. (Let's not talk about the people she's killed over the years.)

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#PennedPossibilities 662 — Imagine This: Would your MC be a sore loser or a sore winner?

The devil-girl is autistic, though she masks well. She has a uniquely nuanced viewpoint on almost everything. Mostly, she would rather not be noticed and would not volunteer for a game unless it was framed as a learning experience, or a fight where she has permission to hit someone. (If you attack her, you've given her implicit permission.) She often disappoints her opponents when she loses because she chalks up her loss to a "learning experience," and might even thank her opponent, or ask them to teach her. She rarely loses, however. If she wins, she'll volunteer to teach her opponent what she did to make them a more challenging opponent for next time.

People quickly realize she b weird and avoid "playing" with her.

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.06 — Describe the way your MC walks.

I have two disabled people in the novel. Because of shifting POV in 3rd person, one such SC gets promoted to an MC by the end of the story.

She was born on Mars. Like other native Martians, her hip has grown differently angled than those in higher gravity. It's evident when she's wearing the minimal clothing typically worn. Additionally, her legs are bowed (like the other natives) because of the ease of squatting in the lower gravity, primarily due to habitually moving in a squatting position in lower gravity. Children are referred to as frog-hoppers, and as pre-teens they seem truly frog-like. The condition is far less pronounced in adults but, compared to Earth imports, their gait and leg placement is instantly recognizable.

This MC is an amputee. The lower part of one of her legs is replaced by a wearable prosthetic. She wears prosthetic feet on both legs. The advanced cybernetic gear is built of spring steel and powered by a radioisotope battery. She's undergoing intense therapy, and is determined to walk, run, dance, jump, and climb on Earth when she is done. Her right hand is prosthetic also. When she walks, it is clear she's dragging and compensating, and that moving takes effort and thought. In weightlessness, it's less evident.

Another character is paralyzed. He wears braces (a partial lightweight cybernetic exoskeleton). If it weren't for the bulk of the gear over his clothes, you would never know he was so paralyzed that he otherwise requires crutches, even in Mars gravity.

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“Technology is an alternative politics”

Peter Thiel

Their relentless pursuit of AI boils down to a simple idea of running every moment of our lives with an algorithm they control.

Those of us that live in San Francisco in particular, should understand that the billionaires from Silicon Valley intend to push everyone out of the city that disagrees with their fascist vision. The they intend to take over a privatized Presidio.

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.05 — Have you ever worked through a bad experience by writing fiction?

As a feminist writer, much of what I write is what I feel for others, or the experiences I've garnered from listening and being the shoulder to cry upon. As a shy person, I've been pretty successful navigating conflict.

My latest novel (which I should be EDITING right now), is me working through a bad experience, watching the world falling apart. I was brought up in a time where they actually taught civics in high school. I learned how government was supposed to work, about civil rights legislation, about the theoretic "American Way." I also took history and learned about slavery and the devil's compromise it represented, the Civil War, the Guilded Age, Roosevelt and Trust Busting, about petty aristocratic squabbles starting the First World War, fascists starting the Second World War, and the civil and women's rights movements.

Do they teach these things any more? Or is it an elective!? You shouldn't be allowed to graduate without passing these subjects.

Mars Needed Women is me working through wanting to cry when I read the news today, even the non-clickbait-y kind. Money corrupts some people. Even if it is a microscopic number of folks that become megalomaniacs, the power money lets them wield is outsized and scary. Didn't we learn why that doesn't work with the nazis? Like, maybe 85 years ago?

It. Makes. Me. CRAZY.

And yes, Mars Needed Women is a takedown of the fatal idiocy of fascism (i.e., loyalty being more important than capability) and a certain over-the-top a&&hole with a fascination for Mars.

I feel marginally better having written it.

Marginally.

Still crying when I read the news.

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.05 — Describe the way your antagonist speaks.

She often speaks like a teacher (as versus a professor), because that's the role she most identifies with—despite being an absolute ruler. She's always seeking a new favorite student, though they don't always know that's the role they're now playing. She doesn't explain everything, but will work with you, even if you are failing, telling you just enough until you tip over the locomotive (that's one of my recent scenes). If talking like a teacher fails her with a student, she will revert to speaking like she's their mother. She's been known to grab an ear, pat a head, or swat a bottom (okay, well, that's more if she fancies a fellow). She has plenty of experience being a mom, and becoming one.

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l'Argentine est actuellement zinzine de El Eternauta, l'adapation Netflix de leur classique-&-plus de la bédé de science-fiction. vous avez vu / regardez ? en pensez quoi ?

Je viens de finir de lire Carbone modifié de Richard Morgan, et je lance la série Netflix tirée du roman : l'épisode 1 réussit à dégager tous les éléments importants de l'intrigue, change des trucs pour rien et transforme le personnage en junkie depressif... L'auteur est pourtant au générique
On tentera le 2 demain
#AlteredCarbone #SF #adaptation

#WordWeavers 2025.05.03 — If your MC was approached by a street interviewer, how would they react?

She doesn't take well to ambushes; former bodyguard and all that jazz. After she accepted her latest job as a "special troubleshooter" (it's a euphemism for something spoilery), she was escorted without warning into a room—full of reporters. Thus she got experience with being unexpectedly interviewed, and she didn't like it. Someone held up a night photo by firelight that made the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper. It was of an anonymous youth who, after a terrorist bombing, worked tirelessly to triage and save the life of numerous victims, before disappearing.

She got forced to admit it was her.

If you are a writer with an understanding of plot lines, you can probably guess she has some culpability.

To answer this prompt, she'd ignore the reporter as if they were invisible.

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